Tagged: gadgets

What a week for Star Trek fans. Was the universe conspiring to bring their favourite technologies closer to reality?

First Intel predicted voice-control would be as big as touch within the ‘next few years’. Those of us who have fallen out of love with Siri might find that difficult to believe. But Mooly Elen reckons the world is close to cracking a computer that can be told to drop out of Warp.

Not that this feat would be unique, according to another report. Based on the latest estimates that there are 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there, Gizmodo crunched the numbers down to ‘reveal’ that 79.9 million alien civilisations might have developed Warp Capability. Science? Hardly. Fiction? Definitely. But thought-provoking nevertheless.

But if we do get meet Warp-Capable-Aliens, it seems we’ll be more Borg than human by that time. As Ramez Naam points out, we’re already a good way down the line with neurotech implants. Next stop, brain-to-brain communication.

We always suspected the Borg were really us, just with funny lumps on the side of the face.

As does interstellar space travel, once you find out we’re starting to get to grips with Dark Matter. Because we may have even found a new force that affects it. That’s truly significant, given we’d only found four Fundamental Forces in the universe previously. And that’d be a fifth – the only one to interact with the Dark Stuff.

But if that’s too speculative and theoretical for you, you’ll be pleased to know that booking a hotel room in space for 2016 is a practical possibility right now. Sure, it’ll cost close to a million bucks all-in for five nights. But the living quarters are a lot more spacious than you might imagine. Astronauts on the ISS will be looking on in envy.

But consider the downsides too. With everything connected your data exhaust fumes will make you as identifiable as your (newly discovered) linguistic fingerprint. So you’ll be pleased to know there’s now a reason for demanding online privacy.

Once-upon a time there was no easy comeback to the assertion that: ‘If you’re doing nothing wrong, there’s nothing to be afraid of. So why would you want privacy?’

Everyone has something to hide and usually no one cares. By surveilling everyone, you catch the benign breaches of law and taboo. If the public are all guilty, the executive part of the government can selectively enforce laws, essentially giving them both judicial and legislative power, which defeats the whole point of separation of powers.

Which also means the police will have time to catch the real cyber-criminals. Like the hacker who created a virus and started taunting the Japanese police with a series of riddles in their effort to catch him. His latest was strapped to a cat. The detail of this story reads like a particularly over-the-top Scandinavian crime novel. Perhaps he’s watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo a few too many times.

But for those addicted to electricity it appears coal might again be the future. We can now make it from plant matter overnight, rather than waiting for nature to take millions of years. And this new stuff is carbon-neutral.

The implications of that (fact?) are worthy of several weighty tomes. So we won’t cheapen it with homespun analysis. But to prove the point that the rate of acceleration is set to ‘unstoppable nosebleed’, hundreds of new things became possible for the first time this week.

If the sheer volume of stuff they have to understand is inducing stress, at least they can now monitor anxiety levels with a thumb pressed against their mobiles. Meanwhile, research is ongoing using real beating hearts grown in the lab. And doubtless it’ll result in wonderful treatments for stress-related conditions. But surely it’s better not to do the damage in the first place?

Better to try the new Apple TV which – contrary to our scepticism of last week – may actually be close at hand. We’re sure it’ll be outrageously popular if it does reinvent the category. Maybe that’ll just stress Dave and Boris more through jealousy?

Anyways, after all that anxiety-ridden politicking, how about some lighter relief? Happily suck on these until we resume our – hopefully less politics-influenced – observations tomorrow: